Part of a cycle.
Thursday, 5 January 2012 15:00![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flint_garouWhat happens when we die …
5 January, 2012
The moon is in the waxing Gibbous (Galliard) Moon phase (77% full).
The TV has a game going on it, Fable paused halfway through a cut screen, the controller for the xbox resting on top of a book on the couch. But Flint has temporarily abandoned the video game and the book both for the contents of the refrigerator, and food and drink.
Out in the hall there's a door that closes far louder than it should have and a scarce half moon creeps into the breakroom, still wincing. Her hands after full of dirty dishes, some looking like science experiments. That left over risotto has achieved sentience just about. Greasy haired with dull skin, and deep, deep bags under her eyes, Solsiva is not looking like your average fourteen year old except for the excitement that lights her eyes.
Flint looks up, then up some more, before half-waving, ducking back out of having nearly been in the refrigerator with juice and some fruit. Hard to wave when your hands are full. "Hey," he offers, though the words are fairly quiet overall.
"Hi," Solsiva offers after a moment or two of looking at him, her voice flat and bland. You could almost see the gears groaning into motion again before she decided she didn't know him. Long enough to have forgotten she has things in her hands as she starts to lower them, jumping again as a green fuzz encrusted fork clatters on the ground. "Oh, uh." Those go into the sink. "I'm Solsiva. Uh, were you in the email?"
The cub's head tilts to one side. "Email?" A pause, and he shakes his head. "Um, no." Another pause, as he fishes down a glass for the juice and a plate to put the fruit on, using the table as a workspace rather than the kitchen counter. "'m Flint." The (brief) introduction is in between bites of fruit, and in between shoving his hair out of his face.
Solsiva's expression clouds as she sets about thinking again, twisting the tap so the water starts to break up the… Stuff on the dishes. "Nice to meet you, Flint. I'm a Forstern Philodox of the Glass Walkers." She almost doesn't add the tribe, but, with a slight shrug, she does. "Want a hair tie? Or… Barrette? Whatever that's called."
After a moment of thought, the cub shakes his head. "No, thanks," Flint says. "It gets in my face, but." Another shrug. "Annoys me more if I try and do something about it." And in fact, now shoved out of his face, his hair seems to be a little less unruly than it was. The juice and plate of fruit are both put down for a moment longer. "Galliard cub," Flint adds, with a jerk of his head towards the entire building to indicate tribe.
"Like roaches," Solsiva says blandly, bending over with a groan to retrieve the fork she had dropped. Her hair is all greasy, her skin dull, and steamer trunks hang under her eyes. Grumbling to herself she tosses it into the sink with the rest of the rinsing dishes. "Have you seen Mr. Kavi-rhya around?"
"Um, earlier today," Flint responds, with a glance towards the door to the breakroom, before pulling out a chair to half-lean on it while he eats. The plate of food is pushed a little towards Solsiva, as well. "Fruit?"
Solsiva stares at the fruit as if it were an alien life form. Or a snake about to bite her as she leans back to the sink, shaking her head, "No… No scurvy yet. Thanks." She picks p a sponge to knock the worst of the stuff that wasn't dissolving before tucking it into the dishwasher. "Learned the Ice King song yet?"
There's a ping from the stairwell door, and a moment later it opens as the galliard in question steps into the Glass Walker section of the tenement.
A half shrug follows, as Flint moves the plate of fruit back to it's original spot, gaze darting over to the doorway of the breakroom again. The cub goes quiet and thoughtful, and slightly distant, as he considers the question. Another pause after a false start, before Flint looks back over at Solsiva, pushing another stray strand of hair out of his face. "Kavi-rhya sang it once, but."
Glancing over her shoulder during the pauses, Sol tucks things where they need to be before using her foot to put the door back up, using her hip to push it closed. "But?" Sol asks, poking the buttons to get it to start. Completely forgetting the detergent.
Perhaps responding to the sound of voices, Kavi appears in the doorway. He lifts his hand in a silent greeting to Flint, but then spots Sol a moment later, and her presence provokes a full-on grin. "Hey!" he calls across to her.
Flint looks at the dishwasher, distracted from the earlier question. "Um, there's no." Flint nods to Kavi's entrance. "There's no soap in the dishwasher, yet? I was going to do that, but I hadn't gotten to it."
Solsiva ends up just smacking the front of the machine and jerking back as it suddenly starts to make noise. And then Kavi is there and she gives him a lop-sided grin, the sort where her brain had to take a moment to remember exactly which muscles to pull to get it to work. The excitement lights her eyes again as she says, "Mr. Kavi-rhya! Good. I was looking for you! I've… I've got the data processing, but I think we've got some new leads and, and." She babbles along those vague lines for a bit, missing this fact about soap.
Kavi's brows rise as he listens to Solsiva, and he nods as she trails off. "That's. That's good," he tells her. "I think. If we put that together with what Lefty found, last week? I think it will be good." He pauses, glancing to Flint, and then returns to the philodox. The grin has faded, but a soft smile remains. "Mouse is going to come talk to Skokiaan, soon. When the moon is a little fuller." His voice, like the smile, is softer than before.
Flint gives the dishwasher a last glance, before simply shrugging his shoulders and ignoring it. The cub is still for a moment, before the juice and fruit are temporarily abandoned in favour of saving the game, before turning the game and television both off and then returning to lean on the chair by the table.
"Really?" Solsiva goes to run her hand through her hair, but stops suddenly and looks at it with a wrinkled nose. "Ew. Um. It'd be such an honor. Ms. Mouse-rhya." And she does mean it, though her voice starts to tremble. She looks over to watch the cub move around. And stare as her mind blanks and she's frozen. Blink and her voice grows smaller with her embarrassment, "Uh. I'm. I'm going to sleep, I think." She nods to herself and drags her feet back over to the door.
Kavi moves out of Solsiva's way, but there's something in the way he watches her, confusion, or concern. He keeps his gaze on her as she heads out the door. "You should look for Lefty and Jacob, tomorrow. They'll be happy to compare notes with you."
"Goodnight," Flint offers, quietly picking at a piece of fruit.
Kavi watches Sol, even as she walks down the hall. Only once she slips into her own apartment does he turn back to the cub. "Hey," he says, then, as though he were only now entering the room.
Flint settles all the way onto the chair from simply leaning on it, the piece of fruit dropped back onto the plate. "Hey," the boy responds, a nod lowering his gaze to the table for a bit.
Kavi comes the rest of the way into the room, and though he glances toward the running dishwasher, he heads to the seat near Flint. "Tell me what you learned."
Flint grins a bit more, his grip on the glass of juice relaxing some, before he fully puts it down on the table. "More about the Wyld," the cub says. "Mouse-rhya and some others were talking about the dreams, and about the brambles, on the Bawn, and …" he pauses, fishing through the memory of the conversation, "and Jack-rhya said that Wyld things don't like to be controlled. I thought about it for a while, after."
Kavi settles onto the chair near Flint's, the sound of the dishwasher apparently forgotten. "What did you think?"
"It made sense," Flint says, "and made more sense, reason behind, of why the more Wyld places are further from people, and such. Without imposed external control." A pause, and the boy's attention returns temporarily to a few grapes.
Kavi nods, a thoughtful expression tugging at his brows. "Did you… Do you have any questions?"
Flint nods, picking up the cup of juice again for a moment. "Yes, but I'm not sure what they are yet," Flint says, with half a grin. "So I'm not sure that helps, quite."
Out in the hallway, there's a thunk, then a THUMP, and then a loud, colorful series of swear-words. The voice (and the swearing) are likely recognizable.
Kavi is up out of his seat in a heartbeat, and already heading toward the sounds from the hall. "Mouse-rhya?"
Flint follows a step behind Kavi, thumbs hooking in his pocket as he goes, brows furrowing slightly.
Mouse is already picking herself up, still hissing a few expletives at the floor. "S'nothing, I'm fine. I just tripped."
Kavi looks at the floor, and then up at Mouse, the corner of his lip caught between his teeth. "Do you— Is there anything I can do?"
Flint nods mutely, remaining at the edge of the doorway between breakroom and hallway, but the furrow of his brows only lessens, doesn't totally disappear.
The floor seems terribly innocent, without any sign of anything that might have been the cause of Mouse's trip. "Nah." She rakes her fingers back through her hair. "Did I interrupt a lesson?"
Kavi watches Mouse for a moment, and then looks back to Flint. "Not a lesson," he says as his gaze again shifts. "Just. Talking about learning? Processing?"
Flint nods to Kavi's words. "Yeah." The boy brings a hand up, rubbing at his forehead. "Some things feel really, really familiar, like I'd heard them before all this, too," Flint says. "Except that I know I hadn't. I dunno." A shrug is offered after that.
Mouse eyes Flint for a long moment. "Well, let's get back to the breakroom." She pauses to brush off her clothes, though there's nothing more than stray carpet fibers there.
Kavi also gives Flint a long look, but then his gaze shifts again to Mouse, and there's a question there, though it goes unspoken. "Maybe… Maybe you two should talk? About that? I'll go get my guitar, and. I can play another one of the teaching songs, after."
Flint nods slowly, a glance to Kavi, before he makes a turn back through the doorway and into the breakroom again. The plate of fruit and the glass of juice are grabbed from the table, before the cub looks between the table and the couch, looking back to Mouse for an answer as to that.
Mouse gives Kavi a nod as well, and follows after Flint. There's no haste to her movements.
Kavi watches them both, as they step back into the breakroom, and then he turns to head down the hall to his apartment.
Flint eventually settles on going for the couch, the plate and glass put down on the coffee table before the boy leans on the edge of the arm of the couch. "So, um." A faint, almost nervous shrug follows the words.
Mouse is pulling a pack of cigarettes from her pocket as they enter. A moment later, she has her lighter too, and she's hooked a chair from the table close enough to sit down in. "Um?"
Flint looks down, slumping onto the couch cross-legged. "Sorry," the boy says, quietly, a pause following as he searches for words. "I just …" Another pause. "I feel silly even considering it, logically I know I hadn't heard any of the things I've learned here, before this." The glass of juice is cradled in both hands in his lap. "I'd been kind of ignoring the feeling of having heard it before, except," he adds. "I figured the weird familiar feeling would go away, except." Another shrug, indicating that it hasn't, along with the bad habit of ending the sentence in the middle.
Mouse's right eye narrows a little more than her left. "Well you shouldn't. That's kind've suggesting something Glass Walkers don't usually have, so I'm a bit confused as to why you would. It's not a bad thing though, and I figure Kavi's right, and it's as good a time as any to cover it."
"It's just a bit weird," Flint says, a half grin quirking at his usage of the word weird. As if everything else wasn't weird enough. "And it's just at the edge of it, mostly a nagging feeling. But I could have sworn, when Kavi-rhya taught me the Litany, that I'd heard it before. And occasionally, things since then, too."
Mouse flicks her lighter at the end of her cigarette. "There's a thing that happens," she starts. "…Wait. Has Kavi gone over with you what happens when we die?"
Flint shakes his head slowly. "No," the boy says, one knee pulling to his chest to rest his chin on, attentive.
Mouse takes a few moments to puff at her cancer stick, apparently gathering her thoughts. "Right, well. First thing, this isn't like human religions. With human religions, you take it all on faith, yeah? There's holy scripture, or a prophet, or a pope, or someone who tells you 'hey, this is what happens' and you just sort've believe it, right? We're not like that. There's stuff we don't know, obviously, but what we do know, for certain, is that most of us are part of a cycle."
Flint nods, listening carefully. "Right." It takes a little bit for the boy to visibly process the information he's been given, drink put back down on the coffee table so that he can wrap his arms around his knee. "Yeah, that's how religion worked. Go to church on Sunday, ignore it the rest've the time because it's just words on paper anyway."
Mouse hesitates, eyeing him. "…Well, it's how it works for some people, where they stop with the religion part and just go with habit."
"I never really did … much either way," Flint says. The words are still a little jaded, but not so much as the previous. "We moved too much, and all. It wasn't so important to my mother." The cub offers a shrug, falling quiet again.
Mouse shrugs, and the moment passes. "Well, with us, what happens is that your soul isn't new. You go through life, and you die, and then you go back into the cycle. Some of our spirits go to other places." She pauses, and a shadow crosses her expression, but there's no explanation forthcoming. "…And some of them go to our homelands, to guard them. But most of us will end up being reborn in new bodies, and most of us won't remember a damn thing about it. But. Sometimes we do. Sometimes they're little fragments of memories that we don't remember belonging to us. Sometimes they're actual voices telling us shit. Glass Walkers don't tend to have a lot of that. We're all about progress, not looking back. But other tribes? It can crop up a lot sometimes."
Flint nods again, slowly. "Like remembering hearing the Litany before, and all," the boy says, the information once more visibly processing, his expression shifting a bit several times. "It's a little disconcerting at times." Flint looks up, again. "Like, like all of my experiences are here, and then there's this nagging thought at the edge of it, but mostly." Another pause, and a shrug. "Fragmentary, mostly."
Mouse shakes her head. "I haven't experienced it myself. But like I said, it's unusual with Walkers, but it's not a bad thing. Don't let it bother you. Honestly, it's usually helpful." The word 'usually' is somewhat stressed. "What you should know, anyhow, is that when you die, it isn't the end. We come back."
Flint grins, followed by yet another nod. "A cycle," the boy repeats. "I don't mind it, or anything." The last piece of fruit is picked up off the plate. "I s'pose it's really, really not a dream," he adds, without the nearly as much of the insecurity that had been present in his voice before, not so much to Mouse as to himself.
"Nope," Mouse says. "Or at least, it's not just a dream. Dreams can be entirely real too, you know."
Flint rests his head on his knees, fingers twisting a stray strand of hair. "As long as it's real," the boy says, grinning. "As long as it's real, and I'm not going to wake up back where I was." Even that is shrugged off after a moment, though, as the cub seems relatively happy with this realisation.
Mouse gives Flint a slightly bemused look. "Well, I'd have thought that'd happen quite a few days ago, if it was."
Flint ducks a nod, and a shrug. "If it was to, yeah." The boy shifts, and it seems he's even put on a bit of weight in the past week, from as skinny and underfed as he'd been. "I know, it's ridiculous to get nerves from a sense of security, but." A grin creeps back onto the boy's face.
Mouse waves her hand. "Wait until you see some of the shit we've got to fight, you might be thinking the other way soon enough. Not to dampen your enthusiasm any."
"Still," Flint counters, glancing at the clock. "It still beats everything before, by a long shot." There's no doubt in the boy's voice, before he picks up the empty plate and glass from the table, as well as a book that's sitting underneath a game controller. "I should … I should sleep," he finishes, looking up, and continuing, "thank you, Mouse-rhya."
Mouse nods. "No problem, Flint. Go ahead and crash, I'll see you tomorrow."
"G'night." The boy manages to get to his feet without dropping any of the things he's picked up, and a final nod given as he passes Mouse, as cheerful as the parting is. The sound of the dishes being deposited and rinsed off in the kitchen sink soon follows, and then Flint makes his way out to the hall, and the bunkroom.
5 January, 2012
The moon is in the waxing Gibbous (Galliard) Moon phase (77% full).
The TV has a game going on it, Fable paused halfway through a cut screen, the controller for the xbox resting on top of a book on the couch. But Flint has temporarily abandoned the video game and the book both for the contents of the refrigerator, and food and drink.
Out in the hall there's a door that closes far louder than it should have and a scarce half moon creeps into the breakroom, still wincing. Her hands after full of dirty dishes, some looking like science experiments. That left over risotto has achieved sentience just about. Greasy haired with dull skin, and deep, deep bags under her eyes, Solsiva is not looking like your average fourteen year old except for the excitement that lights her eyes.
Flint looks up, then up some more, before half-waving, ducking back out of having nearly been in the refrigerator with juice and some fruit. Hard to wave when your hands are full. "Hey," he offers, though the words are fairly quiet overall.
"Hi," Solsiva offers after a moment or two of looking at him, her voice flat and bland. You could almost see the gears groaning into motion again before she decided she didn't know him. Long enough to have forgotten she has things in her hands as she starts to lower them, jumping again as a green fuzz encrusted fork clatters on the ground. "Oh, uh." Those go into the sink. "I'm Solsiva. Uh, were you in the email?"
The cub's head tilts to one side. "Email?" A pause, and he shakes his head. "Um, no." Another pause, as he fishes down a glass for the juice and a plate to put the fruit on, using the table as a workspace rather than the kitchen counter. "'m Flint." The (brief) introduction is in between bites of fruit, and in between shoving his hair out of his face.
Solsiva's expression clouds as she sets about thinking again, twisting the tap so the water starts to break up the… Stuff on the dishes. "Nice to meet you, Flint. I'm a Forstern Philodox of the Glass Walkers." She almost doesn't add the tribe, but, with a slight shrug, she does. "Want a hair tie? Or… Barrette? Whatever that's called."
After a moment of thought, the cub shakes his head. "No, thanks," Flint says. "It gets in my face, but." Another shrug. "Annoys me more if I try and do something about it." And in fact, now shoved out of his face, his hair seems to be a little less unruly than it was. The juice and plate of fruit are both put down for a moment longer. "Galliard cub," Flint adds, with a jerk of his head towards the entire building to indicate tribe.
"Like roaches," Solsiva says blandly, bending over with a groan to retrieve the fork she had dropped. Her hair is all greasy, her skin dull, and steamer trunks hang under her eyes. Grumbling to herself she tosses it into the sink with the rest of the rinsing dishes. "Have you seen Mr. Kavi-rhya around?"
"Um, earlier today," Flint responds, with a glance towards the door to the breakroom, before pulling out a chair to half-lean on it while he eats. The plate of food is pushed a little towards Solsiva, as well. "Fruit?"
Solsiva stares at the fruit as if it were an alien life form. Or a snake about to bite her as she leans back to the sink, shaking her head, "No… No scurvy yet. Thanks." She picks p a sponge to knock the worst of the stuff that wasn't dissolving before tucking it into the dishwasher. "Learned the Ice King song yet?"
There's a ping from the stairwell door, and a moment later it opens as the galliard in question steps into the Glass Walker section of the tenement.
A half shrug follows, as Flint moves the plate of fruit back to it's original spot, gaze darting over to the doorway of the breakroom again. The cub goes quiet and thoughtful, and slightly distant, as he considers the question. Another pause after a false start, before Flint looks back over at Solsiva, pushing another stray strand of hair out of his face. "Kavi-rhya sang it once, but."
Glancing over her shoulder during the pauses, Sol tucks things where they need to be before using her foot to put the door back up, using her hip to push it closed. "But?" Sol asks, poking the buttons to get it to start. Completely forgetting the detergent.
Perhaps responding to the sound of voices, Kavi appears in the doorway. He lifts his hand in a silent greeting to Flint, but then spots Sol a moment later, and her presence provokes a full-on grin. "Hey!" he calls across to her.
Flint looks at the dishwasher, distracted from the earlier question. "Um, there's no." Flint nods to Kavi's entrance. "There's no soap in the dishwasher, yet? I was going to do that, but I hadn't gotten to it."
Solsiva ends up just smacking the front of the machine and jerking back as it suddenly starts to make noise. And then Kavi is there and she gives him a lop-sided grin, the sort where her brain had to take a moment to remember exactly which muscles to pull to get it to work. The excitement lights her eyes again as she says, "Mr. Kavi-rhya! Good. I was looking for you! I've… I've got the data processing, but I think we've got some new leads and, and." She babbles along those vague lines for a bit, missing this fact about soap.
Kavi's brows rise as he listens to Solsiva, and he nods as she trails off. "That's. That's good," he tells her. "I think. If we put that together with what Lefty found, last week? I think it will be good." He pauses, glancing to Flint, and then returns to the philodox. The grin has faded, but a soft smile remains. "Mouse is going to come talk to Skokiaan, soon. When the moon is a little fuller." His voice, like the smile, is softer than before.
Flint gives the dishwasher a last glance, before simply shrugging his shoulders and ignoring it. The cub is still for a moment, before the juice and fruit are temporarily abandoned in favour of saving the game, before turning the game and television both off and then returning to lean on the chair by the table.
"Really?" Solsiva goes to run her hand through her hair, but stops suddenly and looks at it with a wrinkled nose. "Ew. Um. It'd be such an honor. Ms. Mouse-rhya." And she does mean it, though her voice starts to tremble. She looks over to watch the cub move around. And stare as her mind blanks and she's frozen. Blink and her voice grows smaller with her embarrassment, "Uh. I'm. I'm going to sleep, I think." She nods to herself and drags her feet back over to the door.
Kavi moves out of Solsiva's way, but there's something in the way he watches her, confusion, or concern. He keeps his gaze on her as she heads out the door. "You should look for Lefty and Jacob, tomorrow. They'll be happy to compare notes with you."
"Goodnight," Flint offers, quietly picking at a piece of fruit.
Kavi watches Sol, even as she walks down the hall. Only once she slips into her own apartment does he turn back to the cub. "Hey," he says, then, as though he were only now entering the room.
Flint settles all the way onto the chair from simply leaning on it, the piece of fruit dropped back onto the plate. "Hey," the boy responds, a nod lowering his gaze to the table for a bit.
Kavi comes the rest of the way into the room, and though he glances toward the running dishwasher, he heads to the seat near Flint. "Tell me what you learned."
Flint grins a bit more, his grip on the glass of juice relaxing some, before he fully puts it down on the table. "More about the Wyld," the cub says. "Mouse-rhya and some others were talking about the dreams, and about the brambles, on the Bawn, and …" he pauses, fishing through the memory of the conversation, "and Jack-rhya said that Wyld things don't like to be controlled. I thought about it for a while, after."
Kavi settles onto the chair near Flint's, the sound of the dishwasher apparently forgotten. "What did you think?"
"It made sense," Flint says, "and made more sense, reason behind, of why the more Wyld places are further from people, and such. Without imposed external control." A pause, and the boy's attention returns temporarily to a few grapes.
Kavi nods, a thoughtful expression tugging at his brows. "Did you… Do you have any questions?"
Flint nods, picking up the cup of juice again for a moment. "Yes, but I'm not sure what they are yet," Flint says, with half a grin. "So I'm not sure that helps, quite."
Out in the hallway, there's a thunk, then a THUMP, and then a loud, colorful series of swear-words. The voice (and the swearing) are likely recognizable.
Kavi is up out of his seat in a heartbeat, and already heading toward the sounds from the hall. "Mouse-rhya?"
Flint follows a step behind Kavi, thumbs hooking in his pocket as he goes, brows furrowing slightly.
Mouse is already picking herself up, still hissing a few expletives at the floor. "S'nothing, I'm fine. I just tripped."
Kavi looks at the floor, and then up at Mouse, the corner of his lip caught between his teeth. "Do you— Is there anything I can do?"
Flint nods mutely, remaining at the edge of the doorway between breakroom and hallway, but the furrow of his brows only lessens, doesn't totally disappear.
The floor seems terribly innocent, without any sign of anything that might have been the cause of Mouse's trip. "Nah." She rakes her fingers back through her hair. "Did I interrupt a lesson?"
Kavi watches Mouse for a moment, and then looks back to Flint. "Not a lesson," he says as his gaze again shifts. "Just. Talking about learning? Processing?"
Flint nods to Kavi's words. "Yeah." The boy brings a hand up, rubbing at his forehead. "Some things feel really, really familiar, like I'd heard them before all this, too," Flint says. "Except that I know I hadn't. I dunno." A shrug is offered after that.
Mouse eyes Flint for a long moment. "Well, let's get back to the breakroom." She pauses to brush off her clothes, though there's nothing more than stray carpet fibers there.
Kavi also gives Flint a long look, but then his gaze shifts again to Mouse, and there's a question there, though it goes unspoken. "Maybe… Maybe you two should talk? About that? I'll go get my guitar, and. I can play another one of the teaching songs, after."
Flint nods slowly, a glance to Kavi, before he makes a turn back through the doorway and into the breakroom again. The plate of fruit and the glass of juice are grabbed from the table, before the cub looks between the table and the couch, looking back to Mouse for an answer as to that.
Mouse gives Kavi a nod as well, and follows after Flint. There's no haste to her movements.
Kavi watches them both, as they step back into the breakroom, and then he turns to head down the hall to his apartment.
Flint eventually settles on going for the couch, the plate and glass put down on the coffee table before the boy leans on the edge of the arm of the couch. "So, um." A faint, almost nervous shrug follows the words.
Mouse is pulling a pack of cigarettes from her pocket as they enter. A moment later, she has her lighter too, and she's hooked a chair from the table close enough to sit down in. "Um?"
Flint looks down, slumping onto the couch cross-legged. "Sorry," the boy says, quietly, a pause following as he searches for words. "I just …" Another pause. "I feel silly even considering it, logically I know I hadn't heard any of the things I've learned here, before this." The glass of juice is cradled in both hands in his lap. "I'd been kind of ignoring the feeling of having heard it before, except," he adds. "I figured the weird familiar feeling would go away, except." Another shrug, indicating that it hasn't, along with the bad habit of ending the sentence in the middle.
Mouse's right eye narrows a little more than her left. "Well you shouldn't. That's kind've suggesting something Glass Walkers don't usually have, so I'm a bit confused as to why you would. It's not a bad thing though, and I figure Kavi's right, and it's as good a time as any to cover it."
"It's just a bit weird," Flint says, a half grin quirking at his usage of the word weird. As if everything else wasn't weird enough. "And it's just at the edge of it, mostly a nagging feeling. But I could have sworn, when Kavi-rhya taught me the Litany, that I'd heard it before. And occasionally, things since then, too."
Mouse flicks her lighter at the end of her cigarette. "There's a thing that happens," she starts. "…Wait. Has Kavi gone over with you what happens when we die?"
Flint shakes his head slowly. "No," the boy says, one knee pulling to his chest to rest his chin on, attentive.
Mouse takes a few moments to puff at her cancer stick, apparently gathering her thoughts. "Right, well. First thing, this isn't like human religions. With human religions, you take it all on faith, yeah? There's holy scripture, or a prophet, or a pope, or someone who tells you 'hey, this is what happens' and you just sort've believe it, right? We're not like that. There's stuff we don't know, obviously, but what we do know, for certain, is that most of us are part of a cycle."
Flint nods, listening carefully. "Right." It takes a little bit for the boy to visibly process the information he's been given, drink put back down on the coffee table so that he can wrap his arms around his knee. "Yeah, that's how religion worked. Go to church on Sunday, ignore it the rest've the time because it's just words on paper anyway."
Mouse hesitates, eyeing him. "…Well, it's how it works for some people, where they stop with the religion part and just go with habit."
"I never really did … much either way," Flint says. The words are still a little jaded, but not so much as the previous. "We moved too much, and all. It wasn't so important to my mother." The cub offers a shrug, falling quiet again.
Mouse shrugs, and the moment passes. "Well, with us, what happens is that your soul isn't new. You go through life, and you die, and then you go back into the cycle. Some of our spirits go to other places." She pauses, and a shadow crosses her expression, but there's no explanation forthcoming. "…And some of them go to our homelands, to guard them. But most of us will end up being reborn in new bodies, and most of us won't remember a damn thing about it. But. Sometimes we do. Sometimes they're little fragments of memories that we don't remember belonging to us. Sometimes they're actual voices telling us shit. Glass Walkers don't tend to have a lot of that. We're all about progress, not looking back. But other tribes? It can crop up a lot sometimes."
Flint nods again, slowly. "Like remembering hearing the Litany before, and all," the boy says, the information once more visibly processing, his expression shifting a bit several times. "It's a little disconcerting at times." Flint looks up, again. "Like, like all of my experiences are here, and then there's this nagging thought at the edge of it, but mostly." Another pause, and a shrug. "Fragmentary, mostly."
Mouse shakes her head. "I haven't experienced it myself. But like I said, it's unusual with Walkers, but it's not a bad thing. Don't let it bother you. Honestly, it's usually helpful." The word 'usually' is somewhat stressed. "What you should know, anyhow, is that when you die, it isn't the end. We come back."
Flint grins, followed by yet another nod. "A cycle," the boy repeats. "I don't mind it, or anything." The last piece of fruit is picked up off the plate. "I s'pose it's really, really not a dream," he adds, without the nearly as much of the insecurity that had been present in his voice before, not so much to Mouse as to himself.
"Nope," Mouse says. "Or at least, it's not just a dream. Dreams can be entirely real too, you know."
Flint rests his head on his knees, fingers twisting a stray strand of hair. "As long as it's real," the boy says, grinning. "As long as it's real, and I'm not going to wake up back where I was." Even that is shrugged off after a moment, though, as the cub seems relatively happy with this realisation.
Mouse gives Flint a slightly bemused look. "Well, I'd have thought that'd happen quite a few days ago, if it was."
Flint ducks a nod, and a shrug. "If it was to, yeah." The boy shifts, and it seems he's even put on a bit of weight in the past week, from as skinny and underfed as he'd been. "I know, it's ridiculous to get nerves from a sense of security, but." A grin creeps back onto the boy's face.
Mouse waves her hand. "Wait until you see some of the shit we've got to fight, you might be thinking the other way soon enough. Not to dampen your enthusiasm any."
"Still," Flint counters, glancing at the clock. "It still beats everything before, by a long shot." There's no doubt in the boy's voice, before he picks up the empty plate and glass from the table, as well as a book that's sitting underneath a game controller. "I should … I should sleep," he finishes, looking up, and continuing, "thank you, Mouse-rhya."
Mouse nods. "No problem, Flint. Go ahead and crash, I'll see you tomorrow."
"G'night." The boy manages to get to his feet without dropping any of the things he's picked up, and a final nod given as he passes Mouse, as cheerful as the parting is. The sound of the dishes being deposited and rinsed off in the kitchen sink soon follows, and then Flint makes his way out to the hall, and the bunkroom.